And then I heard one of them coming in after me, not softly because that was impossible, but steadily, and stopping every now and then to listen. By now the man, whichever it was, must realize from the silence that I had gone to ground. If he knew anything about tracking, he would soon find where the broken branches and scuffed earth stopped. Then it would only be a question of time. I softly squirmed round to the back of the tree, away from him, and watched the lights from the car hold steady in the glistening wet branches above my head.
The feet and the snapping twigs were coming nearer. Now I could hear the heavy breathing. Sluggsy’s voice, very near, said softly, “Come on out, baby. Or poppa spank real hard. Da game of tag is over. Time to come home to poppa.”
The small eye of a flashlight began searching under the trees, carefully, tree by tree. He knew I was only a few yards away. Then the light stopped and held steady under my tree. Sluggsy said softly, delightedly, “Hi, baby! Poppa find!”
Had he? I lay still, hardly breathing.
There came the roar and flame of a single shot, and the bullet smacked into the tree-trunk behind my head. “That’s just a hastener, baby. Next time it takes your little footsie off.”
So that was what showed! I said, weary with fright, “All right. I’ll come. But don’t shoot!” And I scrambled out on all fours, thinking hysterically, This is a fine way to go to your execution, Viv!
The man stood there, his pale head fretted with yellow light and black shadows. His gun was pointed at my stomach. He waved it sideways. “Okay. Get ahead of me. An’ if you don’t keep moving, you’ll get a root in that sweet little keister of yours.”
I stumbled ignominiously through the trees toward the distant, glaring eyes of the car. Hopelessness had me by the throat, and an ache of self-pity. What had I done to deserve this? Why had God picked on me as a victim for these two unknown men? Now they would be really angry. They would hurt me and later almost certainly kill me. But the police would dig the bullets out of me! What evil crime were they engaged on that made them indifferent to the evidence of my dead body? Whatever the crime was, they must be quite confident that there would be no evidence. Because there would be no me! They would bury me, drop me in the lake with a stone round my neck!
I came out through the fringe of the trees. The thin man leaned out of the car and called to Sluggsy, “Okay. Take her back. Don’t treat her rough. That’s for me.” He put the car into reverse.
Sluggsy came up beside me, and his free hand fondled me lasciviously. I just said, “Don’t.” I had no will left to resist.
He said softly, “You’re in trouble, bimbo. Horror’s a mean guy. He’ll hurt you bad. Now you say ‘Yes’ to me for tonight, and promise to act sweet, and mebbe I can get the heat taken off. Howsabout it, baby?”
I summoned a last ounce of fight. “I’d rather die than have you touch me.”
“Okay, sweetheart. So you won’t give, so I take for myself. I reckon you’ve earned yourself a rough night. Get me?” He pinched me viciously so that I cried out. Sluggsy laughed delightedly. “That’s right. Sing, baby! Might as well get into the practice.”
He pushed me in through the open back door of the lobby block and shut and locked it behind him. The room looked just the same—the lights blazing, the radio hammering out some gay dance tune, everything winking and glittering and polished under the light. I thought of how happy I had been in that room only a few hours before, of the memories I had had in that armchair, some of them sweet, some of them sad. How small now my childish troubles seemed! How ridiculous to talk of broken hearts and lost youth when, just around the corner of my life, these men were coming at me out of the darkness. The cinema in Windsor? It was a small act in a play, almost a farce. Zürich? It was paradise. The true jungle of the world, with its real monsters, only rarely shows itself in the life of a man, a girl, in the street. But it is always there. You take a wrong step, play the wrong card in Fate’s game, and you are in it and lost—lost in a world you had never imagined, against which you have no knowledge and no weapons. No compass.